


Organized Lightning

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 3K Round-up Challenge, Electricity, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 07:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7160789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in a strange town, Ezra thinks he’s both met a new friend and talked his way out of a jail sentence - only to find he’s in more serious trouble than he could possibly have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/gifts).



> I certainly never thought I’d be using OW Ezra for the ‘experiments by evil scientist’ square on my (now defunct) h/c bingo card but there we go! It’s doubtless historically, medically and geographically inaccurate, for which I take full responsibility (although I’ll happily blame Farad for its actual existence, as well as thanking her for her beta help of course.) 
> 
> Also, many apologies to Deannie for having to wait so long for a holiday stocking fill.

There had been something about Black Gulch from the moment he arrived. 

In essence the place was not much different to any other mountain town Ezra had ever ridden into – lean from battling long winters and waiting in vain for the railroad to push on through – and yet something didn’t sit right. There was the usual main street and stores, the bank, the livery, the furrier, the saloons, and the stage depot. On each side of the main drag was an unremarkable hotel. Ezra made a choice between them by flipping a coin. He’d done the same thing in strange towns countless times before.

Nothing different there.

No, what really made Black Gulch stand out was its backdrop, he decided, the ghastly crag of granite looming above the town. It looked as if it might have been split by a giant lightning bolt. Hunched on top was some kind of old fortress building, which would have been impressive if it didn’t look as if the same lightning bolt had gutted it, turned the windows black, like sightless eyes. Even though he wasn’t much of a one for bad omens, or unexplained feelings of dread, something did crawl down the back of Ezra’s collar when he glimpsed it.

There was nothing else to be done, though. His horse was weary, and Ezra would always rather sleep under a roof than the stars. He’d parted from Buck earlier, around lunch-time. Their journey was complete, their mission accomplished. Two prisoners, returned to the scene of their crime, as requested by Judge Travis.

After they’d stopped to eat some grub in the October sunshine, Buck, as planned, peeled away east. To visit an ‘old friend for a day or two’ he’d said.

“She pretty?” 

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” 

“So I’ll see you back in town then.”

“You heading back the way we came?”

“May take a detour round those mountains, hit the trail south on the other side.”

“It’ll be longer.”

“It’ll be flatter.”

“As you like.” Buck tipped his hat with a smirk. “Don’t go getting in trouble without me.”

Well, there didn’t seem there’d be trouble in Black Gulch. Frankly there was nothing much to get into trouble about. Neither of the saloons seemed from outward appearances what Ezra would call lively, and there was a dourness about the citizens that told him he wouldn’t be at home here. Still, he supposed the prospect of snow barreling over the bluff and into this ravine would be enough to make anyone feel dour.

“One night only,” he said to the clerk at the hotel desk.

“Come far?” the man asked, eyeing up his handgun.

Ezra had learned to either lie or be cagey about such questions. “About ten miles since I set out this morning.”

“Heading west?”

Ezra smiled. “Mostly south. I never thought I’d miss the desert.” He picked up his room key. “There anything to do around here except have a bath and a steak?”

“Well there’s no dancing girls, if that was what you was hoping, but you’ll find some company in the saloons. It’s a quiet town, mind.”

“Sounds delightful.” 

“We don’t ever expect trouble.”

“Well that’s excellent news,” Ezra said.

He’d traveled in plain garb as requested by the Judge who said they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Now free of his responsibilities he took a bath, and put on clean, trail-wrinkled pants and a white shirt with the kind of fancy cuffs that made him feel better. Then he added a brocade vest and finally shrugged on the buff-colored plainsman that he hated for its shapelessness but loved for its warmth.

He found himself some dinner and repaired, content, to the nearest saloon. 

The evening was chilly with a unsettled feel, and there were not many people on the street. While he walked along, a crackle of white caught his attention, high up on the cliff. As if it was having its very own thunderstorm. Or else it could just have been that his eyes were tired.

“Anyone live up there?” he asked the barkeep, curious. “On that clifftop?”

“Nope.”

Ezra looked around. “And is it always this quiet in here?”

A pause. “Yup.”

“Well, good. I’ll just sit over there – quietly – and play solitaire.” 

“We like it quiet around here,” the barkeep said with a wry smile.

“Oh as do I,” Ezra assured him. “As do I.”

The evening proceeded quietly along. 

Which was all well and good, but by half past ten he’d been arrested.

*

Buck woke up the morning after he’d arrived home with that long trail feeling – as if he’d been repeatedly kicked up the backside by a bad-tempered mule. He didn’t care much though, for he’d had a roistering good time since he left Ezra. In fact, he’d been surprised that Ezra wasn’t already there but figured he’d be back today sometime. 

By dusk it was clear it wouldn’t be today.

“And you left him where?” Chris asked.

“Told you. He was going to try and find an easier route. But even going west around those hills wouldn’t delay him too long. He hasn’t been in touch I guess?”

“No more than you were.” Chris sounded sour.

“Well,” Buck defended himself. “I was busy!”

“Perhaps Ezra’s busy, too?” J.D. suggested.

“In some gambling hall?” That was Nathan.

“That’s always what you think, but ain’t always true,” Buck contested. “Just mostly.” He turned back to Larabee. “You worried?”

“No!” Chris snapped. “I’m not worried.”

Two days later, he was worried.

*

For much of the evening it had been the quietest most uninspiring poker table Ezra had ever presided over, but it passed an hour or two. 

He hadn’t won much, for there wasn’t anybody to win much from. For a while after his solitaire had been interrupted (which he’d guessed it would be) he’d chatted with a smart-dressed, older customer who seemed like a professional of some kind – forthright, confident, polite, convincing. The man had been erudite about all manner of subjects, including poker, although he hadn’t been much of an opponent. Added to that he’d seemed charmed with Ezra’s manual dexterity, and Ezra couldn’t resist that. Bryant Smith, the man was called, although Ezra decided that probably wasn’t his real name. At any rate, he’d seemed as glad to meet Ezra as Ezra was to meet him. Despite never quite being able to let his guard down, Ezra made friends easily when he wanted to, or at least enough to have a pleasant evening. 

“Ah, if only there were a way to rejuvenate these old bones,” Bryant Smith had said when the night was still, Ezra thought, very young. “But they need their rest and I must get to bed. Good to meet you, Mr. Standish.” And they’d shaken hands, as if that was the end of it. 

After parting from his new acquaintance, things in the saloon had become livelier. Different men had arrived, changed the atmosphere. Ezra’s blood was up when he’d had to spring the rig in order to scare off a lairy chancer bothering the one female in the place. She was a luckluster percentage girl who wore a token purple feather in her hair, and had been hanging about making eyes at him without much conviction. Although she hadn’t said anything directly about the incident – like thank you, for instance – she had at least brought him a whiskey on the house.

Tired at ten o’clock, he’d tipped his hat at the woman with the feather, finished his whiskey, and left the saloon. It was starting to snow, but only small, bad-tempered flakes that stung.

His bed and the next morning couldn’t come soon enough. He missed Chris, that was the long and short of it. The flatlands, town, his room, the others – well, of course the others. But mostly Chris Larabee, that lean, strong, streak of mean. The man he’d bedded once or twice – unless it was that Chris had bedded him. Anyhow, either way those precious and toe-curlingly filthy encounters should really be nothing but a means to heat his lonely nights. Instead of which the memory pained him like an open wound. 

Even worse, on the way back to the hotel, a journey of barely three hundred yards, the lairy chancer and a lairy friend had stepped out of the shadows to challenge and harass him. Ezra was obliged to use more bullets to save his own skin. This time from his side arm. One was winged, but the lairier of the two had died on the spot where he’d drawn. Unfortunate, of course, but that was how the world turned. Luckily, there’d been more than a couple of folk who’d seen the events unfold.

“Self defense!” Ezra had to squawk, numerous times, as two rough and unmannerly deputies disarmed him and shoved him up the street to the jailhouse.

Arrested, apparently.

Fools.

The sheriff was waiting for him there, and he wasn’t alone.

“Uh, I think you already know Doctor Smith.” 

Ezra blinked as he stumbled into the office. It was his personable friend from the saloon. 

Bryant Smith was standing in the background with a strangely unreadable look on his face. Ezra hadn’t quite fixed on the man’s profession while they’d been getting acquainted, but it definitely wasn’t physician. Hadn’t Smith said he was in commerce and industry or somesuch?

“Former consultant to our great U.S. Army and highly-qualified professor of Science,” the Sheriff stated, which rather blew that supposition out of the water. 

Ezra’s heart filled with suspicion. He wanted to snap back with questions – qualified from what learned establishment, may I ask? And in the science of what, pray? – but the air was removed from his lungs as he was dropped on to a chair.

“If you’re intending to incarcerate me here,” he managed when he’d gotten his breath back, “I do hope you’ll extend me the courtesy of a telegram to my...” He had been going to say ‘friends’ but he changed it to “lawyer.” 

As the hated word ‘incarcerate’ fell from his lips he’d glanced with dislike at the bars of the jailhouse cells, could just make out a solitary figure hunched on a cot inside.

“Well, we have a tried and tested method hereabouts in criminal proceedings, don’t tend to need much more.” The Sherriff was breezy. “ Current head guard of Yuma prison is an old citizen of Black Gulch, you see. Governor trusts him. And he’s always pleased to take murderers in direct.”

“Ah yes, but you see I’m not a murderer,” Ezra pointed out, patiently, although the same feeling that had crawled down his collar earlier was now crawling around his gut. 

“Feller with a bullet in his leg says you are. And so does the feller on the slab.”

“There were other witnesses!”

“Uh-huh.”

The sherriff smirked at him and then set off on a little walk around his jail-house, evidently enjoying being center stage. He wandered across to the cells, peered in at the hunched figure who appeared to be the only occupant. Squinting, Ezra decided it must be a drunk or down-and-out. The figure was slumped insensible against the shadowy back wall, head lolling to his chest. His boots were pointing pigeon-toed towards one another, a large hole in one showing the sock beneath.

On his way back to the desk, the Sherriff exchanged a look with Smith that bothered Ezra very much, although he wasn’t sure why yet.

“You have heard of due process I suppose?” he demanded.

“We certainly have.”

This ‘we’ business was annoying. And concerning.

“If you insist on sending me to trial my lawyer will call on those witnesses to give evidence.”

“Who said anything about a trial?”

Even then it didn’t seem like this bunch of lunatics could possibly be serious.

“You can’t just send me to Yuma,” Ezra said, voice suddenly weak.

The name all by itself was almost too much to bear. 

Because he knew just what kind of an end a man of his inclinations could expect if unlucky enough to find himself jailed in any of the state penitentiaries. Hell, there’d been more than one lawman who’d declared in disgust, and doubtless more than a little relish, that there was a cell in Yuma with his name on, just waiting for him. Along, of course, with a burly welcoming committee. Ezra had always imagined he’d do just about anything never to meet them.

“Well, as it happens, we might be able to help you with that, Mr. Standish,” said Smith at that point.

Ezra decided he must have said something out loud. 

“Maybe we could cut a deal?” the Sherriff added.

Ezra’s ears pricked up. 

*

They put together a map. Circled every place they thought might be big enough for Ezra to have passed through since he left Buck. Then Chris telegraphed the Sherriff’s office in all of them.

_Seeking information STOP Peacekeeper Ezra Standish STOP Brown hair green eyes derringer rig STOP Urgent STOP C Larabee Lawman Four Corners_

The detail about the rig was J.D.’s idea. It was a good one too, but then the responses came back. 

_Apologies. No information. Sorry._

“I don’t believe this!” Chris fumed, the flimsy pages fanned in his fingers. “Where in hell’s he gotten to? Ezra doesn’t sleep rough – he must’ve stopped somewhere!”

Only he wasn’t fuming really. He was losing his mind with fear.

“Reckon some of us should just head on out,” Vin said, hand on his shoulder, grim.

They drew lots, which would have left Buck, Josiah and J.D. to keep a lid on town and keep checking the telegraph. 

Even given the flash of something like disappointment that passed between Vin and Josiah, Chris was relieved Nathan would be coming. 

“Figure we might need you,” he said.

But then Nathan, torn, said he really couldn’t leave right now, there were too many other folk relying on him, too. Babies coming and the like. 

“Well,” Vin said, lip curling in a half grin. “Babies, they just about trump everything.”

Nathan looked between them. “Unless you need me real bad of course,” he qualified, almost as if part of him might have preferred not have to deal with the babies.

Chris quirked a brow at Vin. “Satisfied?” he said under his breath, although there was no bite in it.

Just as Chris, Vin, and Josiah, were almost ready to leave, another telegram arrived. From a town Chris had wired called Sedge Hill, although not from the Sheriff there.

_Standish arrested STOP Reckon Smith got him now STOP Black Gulch STOP Hurry STOP A well-wisher._

“Arrested!” J.D. blurted, eyes wide.

“More to the point, who the heck’s Smith?” Buck wondered out loud. 

“And where the heck’s Black Gulch?” asked Vin. “Ain’t never heard of it.”

“We’ll find it. Must be near enough Sedge Hill that this person, whoever they hell they are, would go there for the telegraph.”

Chris looked at the telegram again. He wondered what the hell Ezra had done to get himself arrested, and he wondered why on earth this telegram hadn’t come from the sherriff who’d arrested him.

He didn’t choose to speculate on why they’d been urged to hurry.

*

There had been a deal. 

The details seemed to have been worked out in advance and money had changed hands, Ezra could smell it. Evidently all he had to do was empty his pockets and say yes. Conveniently, his saddle-bag had been lugged over from the hotel, and in order to avoid a black eye he’d told them where the roll of ‘contingency’ notes was sewn inside the lining of his green coat.

He wasn’t fool enough to suppose the Sheriff of Black Gulch, or Dr. Smith, were truly altruistic at heart – for who in this world was? But, for all his learned skepticism, this ‘deal’ of theirs did have one fact in its favor – Ezra reckoned it would probably save his life.

Because thank the Lord, there was to be no Yuma. Not this time anyhow. He’d dodged a bullet there if they were to be believed. 

It seemed quite simple. For a fee, the Sheriff would drop the spurious charges, forget about him, let him go. As long, of course, as he paid his own bail and agreed to go up to the Fort above town with Dr. Smith.

“There is some interesting scientific work I’m doing up there, Mr. Standish,” Smith explained, forthright as ever. “Government business. And someone of your quick brain could help me very satisfactorily. Just for a day or two. There might even be some remuneration in it for you at the end.”

Hubris and a very strong instinct for self-preservation fell into each other’s arms then, and it was not a match made in Heaven.

“I’m not sure I have much choice,” Ezra recognized, hoping that perhaps there would be sustenance up at the fort because there certainly wasn’t any in Black Gulch’s jail. “So, with reluctance, I accept your terms.”

“Excellent. Let’s drink to it then shall we? Sheriff?”

It smelled like hooch, what they gave him, but it was something to soothe his dry mouth, and the sweetness was nectar to the weary.

Ezra drank it down, wondering if, not only had he dodged a bullet, but he might make a profit in the end.

Then there was a foul aftertaste. His fingertips prickled and went numb. Ezra swung a nauseous, and increasingly suspicious, gaze towards the figure slumped in the cell. He began to feel as if he was seeing things through the distorted prism of a fever.

*

Buck had told them Ezra wanted to avoid as much high ground as possible. 

Snorting at that Vin looked at the map and said he thought he might be able to guess roughly what route their friend would have taken.

“Does it bring us anywhere near Sedge Hill?”

“Reckon.”

But that was almost a week’s ride away, even if they spent ten daylight hours in the saddle. 

“Maybe this Smith’s a bounty hunter?” Josiah speculated.

Vin frowned. “I ain’t ever heard of a Smith.”

Chris sucked his teeth, irritated with him. “So you know the names of all the bounty hunters out there now?”

“Nope, just sayin’ I ain’t never heard of no Smith.” Vin was dogged, pushing back.

They sat over the fire the first night out and Chris was still angry about something. About not knowing, mostly. And about caring so much, probably. 

Vin and Josiah cast long, uneasy looks at one another across the flames. Didn’t say hardly a word to Chris, but talked quietly by the horses in that way they had. They were there so long Chris fell asleep before they came back.

*

Ezra woke up several times in the back of a wagon. 

He knew it from the swaying sensation, the racketing draught of air through canvas, the sound of the harness jingling. The second time he drifted to the surface, which didn’t seem long after the first, he realised he was jolting on the bare plank floor with his back against the side, already bruised from the motion. His legs were stretched out. He could sense he was not alone in there but his eyes wouldn’t open properly to see.

To quote Mr. Wilmington, what in thunder was going on?

He’d agreed to the blasted deal. Why on earth would they need to extract compliance under duress?

The next time he awoke, all was still. No more wagon. His stomach felt unsettled and it was cold. Under him a cot, around him darkness and a dusty, rotting wood smell. As his eyes peeled open he became aware of a faint light from overhead. 

For a moment or two Ezra thought it was Yuma after all. He was in a cell, the walls were thick, and the only light was from a small barred window very high above his head.

Betrayed, he thought, heart racing in fear, and then anger. The bastards!

But no, he hadn’t come far enough to be anywhere near the dreaded Yuma Jail. 

His brain and body told him he’d only been in the drug-induced slumber for a few hours. Just long enough to get him here without resistance. Here being, he guessed, Black Gulch Fort, looking down over the town.

When he sat up he realized his right wrist was shackled to the side of the cot. The metal clanked against the iron of the frame, dug into his arm as he pulled.

Smith must be very anxious indeed that he didn’t renege on the deal. Although perhaps ‘anxious’ wasn’t the word. Perhaps ‘demented’ was more accurate.

Ezra decided he didn’t feel too good, he definitely didn’t want to be here, and that he’d made a monumental error of judgment.

His thoughts leaped, panicked, to Chris, and the others. They’d be wondering where he was. Well, hopefully. Thinking about coming for him, but not knowing he was here. Buck wouldn’t even be back yet. Lord, it would be days before they were alerted to anything untoward, many more days before any of them would come after him.

‘Sakes alive, Ezra, this is a dreadful fix.’

He said the words out loud, a rallying call to himself in the quiet. Then through force of will he settled his mind back on the metal of the handcuff biting into his skin, trying to ignore the swooping panic in his gut. 

So. First things first. He’d gotten out of things like this before. Perhaps he could again.

*

When he was in charge of town (as he thought), Buck sent another telegram back to Sedge Hill. It was addressed to ‘The Well-wisher’ and J.D. said he thought the telegraph-operator would just throw it away if it wasn’t for anyone real.

“Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. Reckon we have to take that chance, kid. “

_Coming for Standish STOP Need more information STOP Who is Smith? STOP_

Even when he’d sent it off he felt frustrated. J.D. was almost certainly right.

“What we need is some new-fangled voice telegraph,” he said. “So’s you can speak right to who you need exactly when you need. Like you was face to face.”

“Yeah, Buck, well that ain’t ever gonna happen.”

“How do you know that? Back in the old days folks would have thought just the same about speeding along railway tracks, or gas lighting, or sending telegrams. New ways of doin’ things are coming all the time, kid. I’ll bet some feller somewhere’s working on just that right now. There’s some clever scientists out there you know.”

J.D. fluffed a little then. “Yeah but sendin’ voices ain’t the same as words.”

“The words come through as sounds don’t they? Why can’t voices? ”

The kid shrugged. He frowned, impatient not to dwell on things that couldn’t be. “I don’t know, Buck, but they can’t!”

Buck supposed he knew it really. He sent another telegram addressed to the sheriff in Black Gulch.

Urgent information requested STOP Smith with connection to missing Standish STOP Wilmington Lawman Four Corners

Nathan helped birth the baby that had been threatening to come early and then wandered along to eat a late dinner with them.

“I’m thinking maybe I should follow on,” he said.

“But we don’t know if they need you,” J.D. piped up. “They said they’d wire if they did.”

“J.D.,” Nathan said, patient, just the right side of long-suffering. “They always need me.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ezra did get fed, although by the time the food came he hardly felt like eating. 

He figured, though, that since this Smith was probably aiming to experiment on him with more sneaky drugs of the kind that had been in the damned hooch, maybe he should fill his belly first.

“Oh no, you’re wrong there, Mr. Standish, not drugs.” 

Smith seemed bemused by Ezra’s aggressive, increasingly plaintive questioning. 

“What then?”

“Here, first I guess I ought to apologize for the way you were delivered. I’m sorry to have to keep you shackled. Conditions are not ideal up here really, although I like the cool. The Army still owns the Fort, but as you can see they haven’t exactly spent much on upkeep.”

“The way I was delivered?” Ezra reminded him, icy.

“Yes, it’s just that now you’re here, and everything’s set up, I wouldn’t want you backing out of our deal.”

“What’s set up?” Ezra demanded, watching as the cuff he’d almost managed to slip was released. Smith eyed it when it was loose, gave Ezra a slanting look.

“Up you get,” he said. “I don’t have a gun because I don’t care for them, but there are some men here who do, since I get assigned my own patrol even when I don’t want one. They’re not very bright and will likely blow your head off.” He sighed. “Listen, I don’t want to be imprisoning you and tying you up. Managing trigger-happy guardians. Don’t want to have to use force at all. That would not be edifying for any of us.”

“What’s set up?” Ezra repeated, persistent.

Smith seemed disconcerted that he wasn’t responding to his reasonableness.

“Well, have it your way,” he said. “I was only attempting to explain my position. There have been great heroes along the years in the scientific experimentation field, you know. Men whose names have gone down in the history books, both scientist and layman.” He looked closely at Ezra. “You’ll be paid for goodness’ sake!” Then, when he got no further reaction he hardened his tone. “You walk in front. Out the door, then turn right. There’s a lamp burning in the lab so you’ll be able to see your way. I’m right behind. There, you see, the men with guns. They are robustly armed.”

A couple of men with faces in shadow stared at him as he came past. Almost certainly those so-called ‘deputies’ from town. Ezra couldn’t see their weaponry but had no doubt that they were packing plenty. 

Underfoot was cold stone. Ezra could smell damp, wax, oil, dust, burning, his own fear. It caught in his throat, made him cough.

He had read tales in his childhood – of lonely castles and spectral walkings. Although he wasn’t afraid of the dark, or the cold, or ghosts, or even of the men with guns, he was afraid of Smith. It was a perfectly logical fear, he thought, and one that he couldn’t control. Every step up this stone corridor was taking him somewhere he couldn’t imagine, where this man was in charge. His collar prickled again, just as it had when he’d first ridden into Black Gulch.

“What is set up?” he asked for the third time, as he stumbled down some shallow steps and went over the threshold of another room.

It was blazing bright in here. Ezra couldn’t tell where the light was coming from at first. There were lamps, it was true, but there was something more as well. He took in a table, a tall backed chair, discolored water, glass jars, rubber gloves, a contraption.

“Do you know what an induction current is?” Smith enquired, and the door clapped shut behind him.

*

They rode into Sedge Hill just over a week after they’d left home. There’d been light snow for the last three.

Straight up the cleared main street they came, bypassing the livery, the hotel and the saloon, and tethering the horses outside the telegraph office. Chris was looking at everybody he saw as if he might be able to identify them as the ‘Well Wisher’.

There was a telegram waiting.

_No news STOP Buck_

“God’s sake, Buck,” Chris growled, screwing the paper up in his fist with a violent flourish, “what the hell use is that?”

“Ain’t Buck’s fault, take it easy.” Vin, as he had been doing all the time since they’d left, soaked up the anger and frustration best he could.

The Sheriff of Sedge Hill was suitably impressed with them as lawmen to do his best to help. He seemed a reasonable man, hard-working and conscientious. But he hadn’t met anyone of the description they’d given, even though the name was by now familiar. He looked weary when they mentioned Black Gulch.

“Some deputy of yours has already asked all of this in a wire. In fact he’s done nothing but send me questions about this missing man of yours. How come any of you heard of that place to begin with?”

Chris had no stomach even to be amused Buck had been tagged as his deputy. And that he was being so damned tenacious. 

“It’s been mentioned in connection with our man’s disappearance. What can you tell us about it?”

The Sheriff gave them a ‘you Pinkerton men now?’ look. 

“Well Black Gulch is five miles due north of here, nearly in the high mountains. Ain’t a big place, although it’s had its share of troubles. There was a fort above the town, became a warehouse after the war, ain’t used now, most of it was burned out years ago.”

“And you know the Sheriff?”

“I know him. We ain’t exactly friends. Thinks himself too good for us because he’s tight with the head guard of Yuma.”

“Yuma!” Josiah yelped, as if the name had hit him like a wet slap in the face. Vin and Chris both snapped their heads to look first at one another and then at him. The sheriff took no notice at all. He’d looked down at his desk and was shuffling through some papers.

“This might be of help,” he said, plucking a yellow slip from the pile. “Came from your deputy a day or so ago. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time but now I guess I see.”

Chris attempted not to snatch the telegram from his hand. 

“To whom it may concern,” he read out loud. “Confirm Deputies Standish, Larabee, Tanner, Sanchez lawmen under my employ STOP Circuit Judge Orrin W. Travis STOP Verifiable Denver High Court.”

“I verified it,” the Sherriff of Sedge Hill said. “Have the wire from Denver, too.”

“Good ole Buck,” Josiah said quietly, and a little swoop of relief – even if only temporary – nudged Chris in his midsection.

“Thanks.” He nodded at the Sheriff, the telegram clutched in his hand. “If he’s in trouble in Black Gulch we can maybe use this.”

“You’re welcome. You make sure and let me know how things turn out. And if I can be of any more help.” The lawman squared his shoulders, tipped his chin at the telegram. “If something bad’s happened to one of our own, then I want to know what and why.”

Chris was quiet when they came out of the Sheriff’s office. They’d come down the steps of the boardwalk on to the street before he arrested Josiah’s progress with a hand. 

“What was all that about?” 

Josiah was surprised. “You surely know how Ezra feels about Yuma? Lord, I hope this business is nothing to do with that place.”

Chris waited for a second or two and then when he got nothing else he said, overly patient, “Remind me. How does Ezra feel about Yuma?”

So Josiah told them. All Ezra’s deep-seated, knotty fears about himself, his likely fate, and what happened in places like Yuma to ‘men like him’. And if Josiah, glancing at Vin as he spoke, really meant ‘men like us’ then he didn’t say it.

Chris listened with his face set like stone. Being held prisoner anywhere – whether it was some hick jail in the mountains, some illegal prison camp in the desert, or one of the foremost penitentiaries in the west – was no fate for any man who didn’t deserve it. God knows he of all of them should understand that particular fear. Chris wondered, regretfully, why Ezra had never told him his own thoughts before. Although perhaps, even though he’d rarely glimpsed the darker corners of Ezra’s head up to now, he should have guessed. Ezra had asked him enough curious questions about Jericho when they’d been private together after all. And he’d been willing to jump bail at Fort Laramie, whatever the consequences.

“Too late to move on to Black Gulch tonight,” Vin said, interrupting his train of thought. The Texan’s blue eyes were resting on Chris’s face, concerned. Chris had never told him out straight about him and Ezra and this nonsensical, giddying bedroom ‘thing’ they had going on – hell, he wouldn’t have known what to say, even though Vin of all people would understand – but he always had the feeling Tanner knew anyway. And now maybe Josiah did too, damn it.

They had to stay put, sharing a chilly room in the hotel and sitting in the saloon until they were too tired to be bothered about that. And the more they sat and the more they grew tired, the worse all the prospects seemed to be. The mix of a missing Ezra, a town with troubles, and Yuma prison, just seemed too worrying to contemplate.

“He’d better not have got himself sent to that place,” Chris muttered under his breath, jaw tight with it. “He’d just better not.” 

Now Josiah had articulated what it represented, he couldn’t get that whole thought out of his head. Ezra figured he wouldn’t last five minutes trapped in proximity to large numbers of men of a violent disposition. Chris knew only too well how prisoners could be eaten up by a combination of frustration, hopelessness and age-old hatreds, how suspicious they’d be of Ezra’s manners, his accent, his sparkling gold tooth, and his cleverness. Not to mention his goddamned smooth skin and pretty eyes.

His stomach clenched.

“Just so long as he’s still among us in some capacity,” Josiah responded, calm. “That’s all we should be praying for right now.”

“Reckon we should get some shuteye.” Vin was grimly determined to be practical, to keep Chris on track when he threatened to drift off. “Don’t know what we’re going to come up on tomorrow.”

Chris lay sleepless half the night. Across the room Vin slept the sleep of the righteously weary, despite Josiah snoring right next to him on the bigger of the two beds. 

He stared blankly up at the dark ceiling over his head. They didn’t know anything, so in theory there was nothing to dread. 

It didn’t matter how many times his brain told him that, his body was reacting a whole different way. His very skin ached for Ezra’s touch – as if that was part of normal for him now – and all night long his guts felt tied into knots.

When daylight came he was the first of them up and dressed, even before Tanner.

*

Ezra prided himself on being able to absorb and retain facts, and he’d been good at science in various of the schoolrooms he’d drifted through as a child. Somehow, though, everything Smith told him about the contraption and what he was going to do with it, seemed to drift in one of his ears and drift out the other. Without leaving any trace of substance behind. 

Insulation, electrodes, forces in equilibrium. It all sounded deceptively safe.

On top of that it seemed he was to be treated to a whole history of Smith’s scientific career to date, his cosy hand-in-glove relationship with the military, who’d nicknamed him ‘the Professor’, and all his many qualifications and awards. As if that made any of this nightmare any better. And then there was the overlong description of how experiments using human subjects were to be carried out.

“I have to have a certain number of subjects in order to make valid conclusions of course, and to keep improving on results,” Smith wound up in a final burst of self-justification. “Just as you need a certain number of cards before you have a hand that will benefit you, right?”

“That depends on what game you’re playing,” Ezra said. 

“Now listen, Mr. Standish, be reasonable. I’m not a quack, and this science and the methods of learning about it are entirely of the mainstream. Let me tell you, at one of the military facilities in Washington there is currently work being carried out on galvanism, as a form of state execution.” 

Ezra queasily couldn’t decide if that particular nugget of information was a threat or not. 

“Really,” he said.

“Yes, really. I’m not in the least in favor of that. My only interest here, with you, is scientific, philanthropic, the therapeutic usages of electricity. And so what I’m trying to say is that you really don’t need to worry that I’m trying to murder you. Why on earth would I want to do that, I hardly know you!”

In Ezra’s experience justification for murder was often so flimsy as to be non-existent. He raised a skeptical brow, but it was a weary one. As the hours passed he was having to concentrate very hard on staying alert.

“No, no,” Smith rejoined. “I just want to test some theories. Well, to re-test in fact, with some light current, on a fresh subject. It will, almost certainly, make you feel rather calm and rested, and may, if we are fortunate, clear your head. I have observed such an effect in a few previous subjects and would like some more um... positive results in the same vein.” He turned from the contraption, almost eager. “And I am almost certain there will be no side effects. Or, at least, only very limited ones. Come on now, Mr. Standish, consider – I may be doing you an enormous favor. As quick as your mind is, I do have an idea I might be able to render it even quicker.”

Ezra tried to swallow away the lump of cankerous fear that had settled at the base of his throat at the tenor of Smith’s voice, at his chilling reasonableness. 

“And when you’ve finished your trial,” he said, voice somewhat feeble, “I will of course be free to go?”

“That was what I agreed with the Sheriff.”

“And you trust him?”

Smith’s eyes had narrowed in consternation. He clearly didn’t want to be bothered with such exigencies as truth, morality, and the rule of law. Neither though, Ezra guessed, was he simply a cruel man. That thought didn’t comfort him. For the contraption was laid out before him and he’d just observed Smith run his fingertips over it, solicitous, excited, proud. 

“You know,” Smith said, not answering the question. “I am very glad that you are a man of a questioning brain. And educated. It’s frankly not been often lately that such subjects have presented themselves to me. It’s usually no-account criminals with nothing between their ears in the first place. I have a theory, as yet untested, that someone like yourself may conduct the impulses rather spectacularly.”

Ezra thought it unfair that, yet again, something unpleasant was about to overcome him just because someone considered he was too clever for his own good.

*

“Hell knows we’ve ridden into some strange places,” Josiah commented as they came up the main street of Black Gulch the next day, three abreast. “But this one feels worse than strange.”

Vin didn’t say anything to that although he gave Chris a sidelong glance.

“I don’t even know what you mean by that, preacher,” Chris grumbled back. He shuffled in the saddle, glanced subtly left and right. He was not a man to broadcast his own insecurities. “Could just be that you’re worried.”

When they’d dismounted at the rather ramshackle Livery, paid up front for their horses’ care, Josiah and Chris walked out on to the street ahead, and stood for a moment.

After a minute or so, Vin came out to join them. “His horse is there,” he said, eyes like flint. It should have been good news, but somehow Vin’s face suggested otherwise. “Livery hand said they’d been paid for the keep, but ain’t seen the rider in over a week.” 

“They sure?”

Vin huffed, staring along the main street past Chris, face set. He slid his eyes to meet Chris’s. “They’re sure.” His eyes moved back to the end of the street and he frowned. Chris found himself turning to follow his gaze, found it was resting high up on the granite crag behind the town.

“What in hell’s that place?” Josiah murmured.

“Pretty ain’t it.” Vin shook his head, gave an involuntary roll of his shoulders. As if an icy breeze had passed by.

“Reckon we should split up.” Chris was clipped. “I’ll take the saloon. Josiah, you go and see what this Yuma-lovin’ sheriff’s like. Vin, try the hotels.”

“I like how you choose the saloon for yaself,” Vin said, in a voice that could have been irritated. But he knew, really, that Chris would want to make at once for the place where he was most likely to find some trace of Ezra. His spirit if not his person.

“Yeah well I’ll stand you boys a drink when we’ve got something to drink to.” Chris peeled away without further ado, began towards the saloon a few blocks down.

Vin and Josiah stood for a moment more, both staring up at the structure up on the crag.

“Doesn’t it remind you of a haunted castle?” Josiah said, head cocked slightly as he stared up. He seemed to have forgotten who he was talking to. “Exactly like the ones in those gloomy books by gloomy Europeans?”

“Looks like a deserted fort to me,” Vin said, a tad sharp. “I’ll see you in the saloon.”

On his way there, Chris passed a telegraph office. He wondered why the hell the mysterious well-wisher hadn’t wanted to send their telegram from here but had ridden all the way to Sedge Hill. 

Turned out that the telegraph in Black Gulch didn’t always work so well. The wonders of the modern world were apparently not always so damn wonderful, or at least took a while to truly show the world their worth. The telegraph operator said he would have remembered if any telegram asking about a missing lawman had come through – and he was sure it hadn’t.

And there was them thinking it was out in the far west that things were unreliable. 

Chris sent a hopeful message to Buck anyway.

_In Black Gulch STOP No news STOP you?_

“You think it’s gone through?”

The telegraph operator seemed resigned. “Not your fault if it hasn’t, and not ours either,” he said, defensive. “Sometimes the lines go down the other side of the valley and there’s nothing we can do about that. Folk just have to make for Sedge Hill instead.”

Feeling the fatigue of the journey, Chris stomped back out and towards the saloon.

They remembered Ezra in there all right. 

Josiah and Vin met up with Chris only minutes after he’d arrived through the door. Ezra had paid for a hotel room, Vin reported, but he’d never slept there and nobody knew what had happened to his gear. 

Meanwhile, the barkeep was busy recalling the gambling feller, and how he’d seemed like the sort who could handle himself pretty well. Even so, they’d all been surprised to hear about the trouble the stranger had gotten himself into once he left the saloon that night. But then again, he had shot a man dead on the street.

“Hell,” Chris said with feeling.

“C’mon now, Garrett, we all know it was self defense,” intervened the nearest drinker at the bar. “And we ain’t the only ones who know that. Plenty of folk who saw it with their own two eyes.”

“Sheriff wasn’t convinced.” Garrett, the bar keep, plunked three shots of whiskey down on the bar top. 

The drinker tutted, eyes following the whiskey. “Sheriff’s never convinced by anything lessen the Governor of Yuma says he should be.” He licked his lips.

Impatient, Chris looked to Josiah, who’d been trying to get his attention. 

“Turns out the Sheriff’s not here,” Sanchez said, tone pitched careful as if he knew what he was about to say wouldn’t go down easy. “New young deputy in the office says he’s been out of town on business a day or two – and now he’s on his way south, escorting a prisoner to Yuma.”

“Bitching hell,” Chris said, with even more feeling. “How far behind are we?”

“From what he said – only a day maybe.”

“Can cut that in half, Chris.” Vin had a spark in his eye all of a sudden, always ready for a race. He grinned faintly at Josiah who didn’t always appreciate the speed he rode. “We ain’t got a prison wagon slowing us down.”

They were going to need fresh horses for running down a prisoner convoy, though, even a slow one. 

Chris ignored his empty belly and the fact there was probably more to learn right where they were. At that moment he didn’t care what Ezra might have done, and what trouble they might get into hauling his ass out of the fire. God knows he was always reluctant to look inside his heart, but there was no choice now. It hurt too bad.

“Steady there,” Josiah said, eyes on Chris’s fist clenched on the shiny bar top.

“Drink up, preacher,” Chris growled at him, “because so help me Ezra is _not_ going to end up some murdering son-of-a-bitch’s trophy wife.”

Not waiting to see what Josiah and Vin made of that, he tossed down one of the shots before turning on his heel.

*

“You understand artistry don’t you?” 

Smith had asked the question when he’d finished writing up his latest set of notes one evening. 

Really he didn’t know why he started these conversations at all, because Standish either wouldn’t talk back, or couldn’t. Nevertheless, the ‘Professor’ liked the normality of them. He’d decided that even if his subject couldn’t speak he could almost certainly hear.

“I’ve seen that you do,” he went on. “At the poker table. And that’s what this is – what it should be. An art form, for the hand and the brain. Rather like surgery, only more so. Much more so.”

He’d moved from the end of the trestle table where he kept his papers, then begun to unroll his sleeves as if finishing for the day.

As usual he’d felt pleased, but tired. Things had gone well – so much better than the last few times, which frankly had been a disaster – but he needed to move to the next stage now, as soon as possible. Get his subject and his findings to the investors. Which meant dismantling, shutting down, packing up. As always, it was hard to leave the laboratory. 

“I can’t recall who said it first, but we really are moving from the age of steam to the age of electricity,” his voice had drifted on. “And even if it’s a tad uncomfortable now, you are the forefront of the movement towards this great new frontier. Just think of that.”

Once more he had applied the current.

In the basin the acidulated water had sloshed with the twitch of his subject’s muscles.

“Sparks!” 

Working alone like this allowed him to indulge his perennially childlike excitement at the sheer visceral thrill of it all. He marked a new point on his graph.

“I knew it! Your conductivity is out of the ordinary. Didn’t I tell you?” A pause for a reply which didn’t come. “Well, just one more application. You’ll enjoy your rest I know.” He’d moved to prop his subject back into an upright sitting position. “But unfortunately, since you so skillfully managed to pick the lock of that handcuff, we may have to bring something else into play. For your own security.” 

Eyes slitting in concentration, he’d checked the wires again. For a few seconds he’d considered, as he tended to do from time to time, if maybe he was pushing things too far for the moment. 

But there’d been the brightness of his subject’s reaction earlier, the quick, controlled hand movements and the fizzing clarity of the green eyes. They had been something new and fascinating, something he’d been holding out for. Wholly positive. Gone again now, of course, but eminently worth attempting to re-ignite.

“Our experiment is almost at an end,” he’d said, making up his mind. “I do rather think my results are ready to be presented. But for a few more observations.” 

Damn but he could never resist a few more observations.

He paused, and frowned, and pushed away the encroaching wrongness of the scene in front of him. 

“Ready then? Here it comes.”


	3. Chapter 3

They left Black Gulch on a swirl of bitty snow, riding right under the overhang of the clifftop.

It was freezing out in the open country but the weather wasn’t going to hold them up. Vin reckoned the spattering of wet flakes was just Winter having one of its periodic trial runs. They rode south-west on the main road, picked up wagon tracks a few miles out. 

And because they were aiming to catch up, Chris said they could just do with less rest than usual. He didn’t even feel too bad about it, either. Although he knew both Josiah and Vin had their problems with Ezra at times, their commitment to getting him out of trouble seemed as fiery as his own. For Vin it was maybe as much for him as it was for Ezra. And for the preacher… well, he had more zeal about this rescue than Chris had ever seen. The thought came to him that probably for Josiah it was also about supporting Vin, for they had their own insane private life together, too. By now, though, he figured that the seven of them had become something so particular it would have been the same whichever of them was dangling on a hook. And for whatever reason. Which didn’t mean, of course, that some allegiances weren’t stronger than others. 

Whatever it was, the combination of less rest and more speed brought them up on the sherriff’s little prison convoy by the following early morning.

There was a crust of frost on the ground. They’d left their brief camp at first light, caught up at the next valley. Down below they saw woodsmoke, bedrolls, three horses not yet saddled, and the ugly hulk of a prison wagon being hitched to one more. They sat up on a ridge while Vin scoped the whole place through his spyglass and they watched the camp being broken up. The prisoner himself sat under the back step of the wagon hunkered down in a coat, mostly hidden from view under a black hat.

“Can’t see his face but that’s his all right,” Vin said, when he’d taken the spyglass from his face. He sounded rattled. “And the old plainsman coat he wears.”

Chris squinted. Somehow he’d been expecting, as always, to come up on Ezra in his fancy coat. The tan-colored plainsman didn’t seem right – in fact, for a moment or two he couldn’t even recall it. 

“You sure?”

“His hat, yes,” Josiah interjected. “Even from this distance, I’d know it anywhere.”

It did seem to be, and the plainsman was more familiar now Chris thought about it. He remembered Ezra wearing something like it when they were out on the trail in the dark and cold. That night during the Royal business had been one of those, when Ezra had lost his green coat and Chris had fought Tophat Bob, which Ezra liked to joke was the reason Chris had fought him in the first place. Remembering Ezra’s relief at retrieving his signature garment could normally make Chris grin, but right now it brought a harsh catch to his throat.

He swallowed around it. “We going to announce ourselves to ‘em before they leave?”

“Nope.” Vin split the mare’s leg, reached for his bullets. “They could turn it into a fight if we take them in camp.”

Chris eyed the mare’s leg. “Looks like you’re fixin’ to fight anyhow.”

Vin’s gaze drifted to him, almost amused. “May be the only way to stage a jailbreak, cowboy, and even though we’re the law, we ain’t lettin’ Ezra get taken to Yuma, no matter what they say he did.”

“Dear Lord,” Josiah murmured, sounding appalled. “What have they done to him?”

Chris’s head turned sharply. A couple of the men below were hauling the prisoner to his feet. The man’s legs nearly went from under him as he was raised up, in a slither of uncoordinated limbs. He staggered, head bobbing so out of control the black hat nearly fell off. Without much kindness he was guided, stumbling, up the steps into the back of the wagon, hardly seeming able to control his own movements.

“Let’s go,” Chris said. “Now.”

Vin got ahead of them once they were on the road. Brought the wagon up sharp at a bend while Chris and Josiah rode up behind the two outriders, guns drawn.

The man in the wagon was wearing Ezra’s hat and coat all right. Right up until Josiah managed to haul him bodily down the steps he could have been Ezra. 

But he wasn’t.

Relief and disappointment spiraled through Chris so hard he felt winded. 

This man’s eyes were at half-mast, a puppet with its strings cut. The hat fell limply off his head while Josiah was holding him up and a trickle of drool snaked down the crease between the corner of his mouth and where his chin lolled on his shoulder. Strange, inarticulate noises came from his throat. His clothes were filthy and he had a hole in the toe of one boot.

“Now listen here,” the Sherriff of Black Gulch said. “I don’t know anything about this missing lawman of yours. Well, not since that bad business back in town anyhows. He arrived, got hisself in trouble, we sorted it all out when I had the facts explained to me, and then I never saw him again. And then in the meanwhile, I’m due with this prisoner at Yuma.”

“Ain’t in much of state to go to prison,” Vin said, mare’s leg still pointed.

The Sheriff turned a festering gaze on him. “Well it wasn’t anything we did. Been that way all along. Yuma want him and Yuma will deal with him. And it wouldn’t be any of your concern either I’ll warrant.” He tapped his handgun in the holster. “This ain’t even your territory, so take my advice and back off.”

“So how come this unfortunate soul is wearing our man’s hat and coat?” Josiah’s tone was soft but he sounded plumb dangerous at the implied threat.

“Hell, I don’t know! We just dressed him up in whatever we had to hand. Your friend must have left them behind. I run a jail, not a coat-check service.”

That Ezra wouldn’t leave his hat unless he was in serious trouble looked to be a fact that wouldn’t impress the sheriff very much. There was plenty he wasn’t telling them but they didn’t even know what questions to ask. Looked like nothing they could do right now for the prisoner, either.

Josiah had let the man back into the care of the other guards, and he moved in close by Chris. “Take Ezra’s hat,” he said, quiet. “Reckon we should go talk some more to Garret, and see if Buck’s come up with anything.”

Reluctant as he was to let go this situation, Chris knew they didn’t have enough on the sherriff. Not yet. He held out one hand. 

The Sheriff gave a short glance to Vin once more. Then he leaned down and snagged the black hat from the ground, handed it over.

“Suppose you want the coat, too?”

“No,” Chris snapped, thinking the prisoner could probably use it in this weather. “You can consider it a donation. And one more thing?”

“I’m all ears.”

“You know a man named Smith?”

There was a sparky silence and then the Sherriff gave him a look, narrow-eyed and keen. “Smith? Are you serious?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Another pause, equally long and thoughtful. “Well no, Mr. Lawman from Wherever the Hell You Came From. I don’t know no Smith save one of our bank clerks got hisself killed six months ago. Now, can we get on our way?”

A rage he didn’t know what to do with crawled around Chris’s veins. He couldn’t speak, just made a hand gesture, inviting the convoy to leave.

“He knows,” Vin muttered, soon as they were out of earshot.

“Yep.” Chris patted the side of his horse’s neck as if to apologize for the hard run he was once more about to give him. “And if he does, maybe some other people do, too.”

*

“Nope, don’t know about a Smith,” Garrett the barkeep told them when they were back. 

It was dark by then. Dark down in town save for the night fires, and dark up on the bluff.

Didn’t seem as if the man was deliberately trying to hide anything, not like the sheriff. Just didn’t seem the kind to put two and two together.

“May have been someone our friend talked to? Any strangers in town same time as him, in the saloon the night he was?”

“Well excuse me now, gents, maybe I can be of help?” intervened a smoky voice at their backs.

Chris turned to see a dowdy-looking female with a feather in her hair standing behind them. He hadn’t noticed her when they’d come in and she hadn’t been in the saloon when they’d been here before. She’d sidled over towards them from whichever corner she’d been hiding in and before she spoke again her eyes slid up and down Vin where he leaned hipshot at the bar, evidently pleased at what she beheld. 

Garrett the barkeep tutted and went back to polishing glasses.

“Ma’am,” Vin said, straightening up.

“I might remember your friend. If you could think of a way to jog my memory.” She cocked her head, saucy.

“Suppose you come and join us over there.” 

Chris gestured at a table in the corner. He wasn’t friendly, and he wasn’t unfriendly, but he sure didn’t want everybody waggling their ears. 

“With pleasure.” She swished her skirt behind her and followed them over.

“Well?” Chris said with any further niceties when she was sitting with a full glass in front of her.

“I was in here that night,” she said, fingering the glass. “And your friend sure wasn’t on his own. Spent most of the time with this feller in a suit who’s passed through town once or twice past couple of weeks. Didn’t know his name at first, and then I found out it was Smith.”

There was a short silence while she downed her shot. Josiah refilled her glass.

“Can you tell us any more?” Vin prompted.

“For you, sugar... well, I would if I could. All I know I’d seen that Smith in here a few times. Kept himself to himself except for jawing with the sherriff.” She curled her lip. “And because I’ve had a few run-ins with the sherriff lately, I happened to see the two of ’em talking in the jailhouse. Money affairs sounded like, contracts and investors and suchlike. Don’t know what in, don’t know who they were. Friend of mine said she’d seen Smith with some fancy fellers in the hotel in Sedge Hill.”

“And our friend – the gambler – they were together here that night, him and Smith?”

“Sure. Playing poker, not doin’ business. Getting along real good. Then Smith said goodnight early, and left.”

“And he wasn’t anything to do with the trouble our friend got in?”

“Well that’s a strange thing. Smith wasn’t anywhere around when that happened. Not when your friend helped me out, and not when he was jumped in the street.”

Chris felt some ease in his heart at once again hearing confirmation that Ezra hadn’t behaved outside the law.

“Helped you out?” 

“Drew his gun to settle one of the troublemakers when he was getting fresh with me. Nothing too unusual round here. I didn’t make too much of it at the time, didn’t even thank him, but later, when I heard he’d been arrested... well, I went straight to the clerk at the hotel, made sure to find out exactly who he was and where he’d come from.”

“So, might we be looking at The Well Wisher?” Josiah asked in a rumble, touching the brim of his hat.

She made the wilted feather bob. “You just might, although I’m real sorry the message took so long. Telegraph was down in town. Again.”

“We’re obliged to you,” Chris said. “Don’t know what happened to him yet, but we appreciate you taking the time and effort to tell us he was in trouble.”

“If he wasn’t around when our friend got in trouble, how come you thought Smith might have him?” Vin asked, remembering the original telegram. 

“Like I said, Smith seemed tight with the Sheriff and in my book anyone tight with the sherriff serves watching.” She lowered her voice. “And your friend ain’t the first stranger to go missing after ending up in jail here.”

Chris exchanged a look with Vin but didn’t say anything. 

“And another thing - Smith asked a whole heap of questions about the Fort first time he was here but I told him it was empty, no use to anyone.”

“Empty,” Vin repeated.

“Well, reckon some itinerants might stop over up there,” Garrett said coming over to refill all the glasses. “There’s firelight up there some nights, but it ain’t nobody from town because nobody from town cares to go up there. Was never much use to ordinary folk when it was a fort and it ain’t much use to nobody now.” He raised his brows. “Darn dangerous to go up there in the dark, too. If you were thinking of it.”

“We need to eat, boys,” Vin put in at that point, eyes on Chris as if he was telling him to settle down. “I ain’t had nothin in my belly for too long. If we get a couple hours shuteye we can get on up there at first light. We thank you for your help, ma’am.”

The woman with the feather snaked her hand across the table, palm up.

Vin made a face and nodded at Chris. 

“He’s the one with the money,” he said.

*

The fort was cool and bleak in the first light of day. 

It was dank inside, and dark. Made Vin make a low hissing sound through his teeth. 

They found the room with the cot first. 

Lying under it, without a twin, was a plum-colored sleeve garter and some fancy buttons. The other two would have known they belonged to one of Ezra’s vests even without the choked off sound Chris made when he saw it.

There was a tin water cup on the floor, empty. A bucket in the corner, also empty. The room was cold.

“Look at this.” Vin, on his haunches, picked up a broken handcuff. Still tied to one side of the cot was some thin rope, frayed and bloodied.

“Kept against his will.” Josiah’s voice was stippled with fury.

“Yep,” Vin said. “But reckon they couldn’t keep him shackled. Looks to me like he got away. At least once.”

Chris stared at the cot and the handcuff as if he couldn’t make his brain work.

Up the passageway they found the only other room in the place with any sign that anyone had been in it. It was a large room, and seemed significant.

There was a trestle table on sturdy legs. The center of it was worn and dented. Scratches criss-crossed the surface, and the front edge showed a shallow divot. As if a chunk had been knocked out of it by something heavy. A chair next to it was on its side.

“Left in a hurry,” Vin breathed out. Josiah stood in the doorway with an unreadable expression on his face. Chris righted the chair, scuffed his boots along the floor. Then he touched the arms of the chair, the grain of the table, with his gloved hand. As if he was trying to feel Ezra in the room somewhere.

Vin’s eyes darted quick and furious around every surface.

“They were here,” Chris said, and he seemed to be basing it on nothing but gut feeling. “Swear to God... where in hell is he? What the fuck they do with him?” His gaze came to rest on the basin under the table. It was old and chipped. There was water in it, rank-looking like standing water. Not colored, and yet not exactly clear.

“Smell of burnin’ in here.” Vin sounded stormy. “You get that?”

Chris wasn’t too sure if he did or he didn’t, but in any case they didn’t know what it was. Or why it was there.

Didn’t know a damned thing.

Nearly always paid to take notice of Vin when he was acting half bloodhound though.

“Well he wasn’t on the way to Yuma and he’s not here,” Chris said in the end, voice so gruff with emotion that the other two could hardly hear him. “Which means he’s out there somewhere and we still have to find him.”

“I know we’re kind of chasing our tails round in circles,” Josiah said. “But I’d say the sherriff in Sedge Hill’s a good man. Reckon we should go talk to him again?”

“Well unless Vin can sniff out which way Ezra went from here.” Chris tried to inject some lightness into his tone and failed. “Maybe you’re right.”

Vin reckoned there’d been a bunch of people in the fort aside from Ezra. Maybe three or four. In other parts of the place there were signs of food remains, dropped trails of tobacco, fresh boot prints in the dust. Outside there were signs of horses, different sets, either coming in like theirs, or heading back out towards town.

Chris was glad to leave the fort behind him, but he wished to hell he didn’t feel like he was doubling back on himself.

*

The men from the fort had brought out badges as soon as they were away from the place. Although they didn’t tell him direct, Ezra worked out that they were headed to the railway. He was shackled by one wrist to one of them, and of course, they’d brought their guns with them, too, as well as a full supply of ammunition.

“Expecting trouble, gentlemen?” Ezra had asked, sardonic. Now he was out in the world and having to function after days in a chair or on the cot, he realized how feeble he felt. He ached like a sonofabitch, all over, as if he was cooking the grippe – but he didn’t intend they should know that.

“No. Why, are you?” one replied, which rather squashed him.

On the train east, the one he was now cuffed to sat wedging him against the window. The other sat opposite across the narrow table, next to Smith.

Parts of him felt very strange, Ezra decided. Perhaps it was just that his shirt needed a damn good clean, but somehow his skin didn’t seem to like it. He couldn’t lean against the seat back quite right. And his head felt the wrong size. He hadn’t had his coat and hat since the jailhouse in Black Gulch, had shivered under a foul-smelling horse blanket on the way here in the wagon. His ruined vest at least was his own but even that felt peculiar, the weave painful against the inside of his arm when he brushed against it. Added to that he’d done some damage squirreling his way out of first the metal and then the rope, couldn’t work even his free hand very well at all.

“You didn’t have to try and escape,” Smith told him, wincing at the torn skin and bruises under the grubby froth of Ezra’s shirt cuffs. “Should have trusted me.”

Ezra nearly choked on that. His only consolation was that the man didn’t seem very comfortable himself.

Bryant Smith, for a man of the future, was not enjoying railway travel much. But then again, he did always have his eyes on the far distance, seemed to want to vault right over this age of steam and into the realms beyond.

“How many more times is the deal going to change?” Ezra enquired after a while. “And is that sheriff in Black Gulch even in on it anymore?”

“To the point as ever, Mr. Standish.” Smith gripped his arm rest as the train juddered left and then right. “Getting custody of you was my main concern. The benefit to him in all this isn’t something I’ve thought too much about. He’s been a good source of subjects, that’s all.”

Ezra cleared too much phlegm from his throat. His weakness felt positively terminal, as if his marrow had been sucked out and dropped in that abominable bucket in his cell at the fort. He leaned his head against the glass.

“That poor unfortunate in the jailhouse? He one of those?”

“Ah, your brain, Mr. Standish.” Smith laughed, he actually laughed. “That poor unfortunate as you call him was wanted for a string of offences. Minor ones, it’s true, but a felon nonetheless. He didn’t give me any interesting results, and now he’s on his way to Yuma – and you’re not. I’d be grateful to him if I was you. Whatever it is the Sherriff gets out of it, you’re the lucky one. The special one.”

‘Yuma’ – the name crackled along Ezra’s nerves. 

“That sherriff finds you your subjects.” He rubbed his chapped lips with a thumb knuckle. “You pay him. And then when he gets your cast-offs, he transports them to Yuma under some agreement he has with the governor there.” 

Strange how it all fell clearly into place in his head, sick as he felt. 

“Well aren’t you glad you’re not a cast-off as you put it?”

Ezra wasn’t, not when he acknowledged the scalding prickles that went down his spine every time he moved. Not when he thought, which he desperately tried not to, of how it had felt when the future was sizzling inside his bones. 

“When will I be free to go, special as I am?” 

“Once I’ve demonstrated your conductivity to my investors. Nothing different than we’ve worked on so far. A matter of an hour more of your time in a laboratory.”

Ezra couldn’t even bring himself to ask if he would, finally, be paid. He didn’t actually care anymore. All that was on his mind was how he was going to get himself off this damned train before any more laboratories and any more contraptions were put before him. In truth he wasn’t sure how he’d avoid bursting into flames if the whole damned process started again.

He found his attention wander from the scene outside the dusty window, gaze drifting past Smith and up the railway car, towards the only other table, and the unmistakeable flicker of cards being dealt.


	4. Chapter 4

Before they left Sedge Hill for the final time, Chris sent a wire to Buck.

_Could use Nathan STOP Need slowdown on trains heading east out of Denver STOP Relying on you._

The Sheriff in Sedge Hill had been eating his dinner in the hotel when they’d arrived. They’d paid the final account for Ezra’s horse at the Livery, and their room in the hotel in Black Gulch, and rode out in daylight. Hadn’t taken long to track the man down, and they ordered some food themselves, listened to all he had to tell them.

“Didn’t know you was interested in Smith,” he said, apologetic. “You should have said. Your deputy back home should have said.” 

“I’m guessing Buck was wiring Black Gulch and not here, Chris.” Josiah slapped his hands down on the table in frustration. “And either the telegram never got through, or our friend the sheriff there didn’t want to send a reply.”

“We’re asking you now,” Vin put in.

“Smith had certification. From the Army. Said he was working on some big study for them and was looking for investors in these parts – there’s a number of army families still around. Had connections to the Fort at Black Gulch in the old days, but I didn’t know that was where he’d set up his business.”

“And did he get any? Investors?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure about who was in for what. All I know is that one of them had a wire from him a day or so ago, because it came through to me for safekeeping.”

“Can you tell us what it said, this wire?”

“Only because you’re you.” The sheriff wiped his mouth. “Said Smith was taking his latest results east, taking the railway from Denver soon as he could get there.” He looked around the table. “Any idea what that’s about?”

“Reckon we saw some of his results on the way to Yuma,” Chris said, heart heavy. 

“Well I’m going to find out more about that, starting tomorrow morning. Been waiting for something like this, some way to get that snake out of the sherriff’s office in Black Gulch. I’d ask for your assistance, but I’m guessing you’ll be heading to Denver first thing.”

“The horses need to rest for the night,” Vin agreed. “Seein’ as we’re planning to run down a train this time.”

“You fill your bellies, gents,” the Sherriff of Sedge Hill told them. “On the house. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”

*

“Whatever did happen to my coat?” Ezra got around to asking eventually, eyes popping open all of a sudden as if he’d been slapped. Or something worse. “And my hat?”

He’d been dozing as the train crawled through canyons and over rivers, had dreamed of a cool breeze moving his hair, callused hands ghosting gentle on his bare shoulders, his clothes lying on a chair in his room, the smell of warm, whiskey-scented skin. By the way the two armed men continued to stare blankly out of the window he thought he’d probably dreamed the questions as well.

Smith had gone for another of his brief wanders through the cars to the caboose. Like Vin Tanner, he didn’t seem to like sitting still for hours while something not in his control carried him along.

The train had been held a long time at the last three stops. Even now it was slowing down often. Jerking and juddering around corners, brakes scraping. That was what had woken him.

Further up the car, the long card game had ceased. There was a deck of cards lying on the table abandoned, a cloud of smoke still hanging above it. Perhaps those passengers had alighted, figuring they could travel faster by some other method.

The dream, and the shaking of the train, seemed to have wakened some fresh spirit of resistance in him. Perhaps it was now time to bring into play the art of distraction. The men whose knees were hemming him into this corner were bored, hungry, somewhat disaffected with the whole journey. And the slower the train, the easier the jump.

He placed both forearms on the little table with difficulty, tried to flex his free hand.

Lord, it hurt. Definitely not at the peak of his powers. But, perhaps, already far enough superior that it wouldn’t matter much.

“Now tell me, would either of you gentlemen be interested in a game of chance?”

*

Buck had done a damned good job.

Whatever he’d telegraphed, the message had gotten through and was being taken seriously. The train that Smith and three other passengers had bought tickets for was rolling to a halt yet again somewhere not far ahead of them, and they should be able to run it down before it was even halfway to Kansas City.

All Chris had in his mind was the man doubtless still jogging along in the back of the prison wagon heading south. And what they might be about to find in the train. Fear, and the desire to end this nightmare, was propeling him ever harder, ever faster, towards their target.

“You need to take it easy, we don’t know what we’re going to find,” Vin said to him when they stopped to water the horses and themselves, switch out the extra, fresher mount for one of theirs. “No sense killing yourself tryin’ to get there.”

“It’s true, Chris.” Josiah looked weary, as if he needed to rest, and rest soon. “We don’t know how everything fits together yet, so we just have to do our best to get there. In one piece.”

Chris took a slug of warm water from his canteen, wiped his mouth with a gloved hand. His jaw jutted. “The one thing I do know is that Ezra’s been in danger from the moment he first rode into Black Gulch.” 

The other two just looked at him, not knowing what to say. The moment he described must be coming up to several weeks ago by now. Enough for very many unknown things to have happened. Chris turned away from them. He suspected that by now all his protective walls were coming down, and that what he really felt was clear as day on his face, in his voice.

“Let’s get goin’ then,” Vin said, still calm. 

There were some passengers leaning out of the windows to see why they’d stopped by the time they came up alongside the train.

“There some problem?” one of them shouted.

“Hope not, sir.” Josiah was polite. 

At the middle car, he and Vin climbed the steps and went in. Chris rode up to the engine. It was radiating heat, the engine ticking over with a sonorous sound, like a heartbeat.

“You Larabee?” One of the drivers was standing on the ground at the side of his train, cap in hand.

“That’s me.” Chris dismounted, swung himself up into the first car. “Don’t know what you’ve been told, but me and my men need to search the train.”

“Well we’ve been doing our best to hold her so’s you could catch up.”

“I’m obliged,” Chris managed to say before he pushed open the first door.

 

*

Ezra knew exactly what he had to do. 

Despite privation and violence, there was nothing foggy about his thought processes. He’d persuaded them to go bring the abandoned deck of cards. Now he would play for the right to take a walk up the car to breathe in some fresher air. And some cash, of course. Cash always sweetened the deal. He hoped once he was on his feet and it was one against one, he’d find enough strength to disarm his captor. And then it would be a question of jumping. 

Just that.

Ezra didn’t like the idea of jumping very much. It needed pluck and backbone, and he wasn’t sure he had either. But still, he vastly preferred the idea of broken bones to having his blood boiled in his veins again.

“I will need both,” he’d said, pulling on the cuff so he lifted his own hand and his neighbor’s wrist off the seat.

The two men had looked at one another. Smith was now back from his latest wander and was snoring gently against the window on the other side of the aisle. They’d grinned and one of them fished the key out of his pocket.

There was a major problem with Ezra’s master plan, however. 

After only the first deal he realized it might be insoluble. While his brain seemed unnaturally fired up and ready to stack a deck of cards in his favor, his hands simply weren’t. Not anymore. Despite earlier evidence to the contrary back at the Fort, his coordination now seemed shot by Smith’s contraption, his sensitivity blunted. Pain seared from his fingertips up into his shoulders and across his chest, making him dizzy. The odd prickling against his back began to feel harsher, like the scrape of wire against abrasion.

The train was slowing again, grinding, juddering to yet another halt. Some of the other passengers in the car were grumbling and Smith grunted and stirred. Ezra’s guards, however, seemed entirely focused on the game.

“Well damn, look at you!” one of the men chortled after a while, so loudly that Smith’s eyes popped open. “Don’t think we can’t see what you’re up to, gambling man.”

Ezra gritted his teeth against the pain of being rumbled so easily. He glanced across the aisle to see Smith pushing himself upright.

“Your hands,” Smith said, voice furred with anger. “Let me see!” He indicated to his man that he wanted them upright and the outer guard shuffled to his feet, pulling Ezra up with him. Then he stared in dismay at the palsied paw presented to him. “What’s going on?”

“You have ruined me, Mr. Smith,” Ezra ground out, throat closed and raw with his own matching anger.

“Your conductivity,” Smith began, fierce.

“Quite superb,” Ezra mimicked. Now he was standing, freed from restraints, he could feel a draught of air moving up the train that set his pulse ticking. The beast had rolled to a complete standstill. Ducking his head slightly Ezra could see the railtrack was on a ridge, the ground sloping away towards some rough ground with trees enough for cover. Vaguely he could hear the sound of voices shouting, windows banging up.

“What the hell’s goin’ on?” one of his guards wondered out loud. 

The man took a step or two one way up the car, and at the same moment Ezra heard the connecting doors barrel open. He was vaguely aware that Smith had begun to move in the opposite direction. Shouts of fright from the passengers half drowned out a gruff voice shouting, “Take it easy, we’re lawmen! Everybody settle down!” 

Far from settling down, a group of passengers had gotten excitedly to their feet, obscuring Ezra’s view. He saw the first of his captors go for his pistol, though. There was a wild yell of “Get down!” and then a shot, followed by panic. He felt the barrel of the second guard’s weapon jab against his side.

“Move yaself!” the man growled and began to shove him up the car in the opposite direction. 

Behind came more shots.

Ezra stumbled over his own feet as he was manhandled through the anxious throng and out of the car. As he was half hurled down the steps and on to the loose stones by the track he could hear footsteps pounding up the next car along.

“Move it!” the guard with the pistol told him. The two of them slithered down the slope, across a flat track of scrubby grass, and then down again towards the nearest knot of trees. For the moment Ezra couldn’t do anything about the momentum and he could heardly control his own limbs anyhow. As they drew closer to the trees he heard a voice from back at the train.

“Hold it! Hold it and drop your gun!”

It was all the distraction he needed. His staggering feet were about to go from under him anyhow, but Ezra did all he could to drag his captor down with him. A twist to one side and a wild grab at the man’s arm sent them both crashing. As he hit the ground on his shoulder he heard cursing. The pistol loosened from the man’s hand, went skittering out of Ezra’s line of vision. An enormous pain wrenched at his shoulder and he nearly passed out. Sharp stones dug into his knees, tore at his chin. And there was a weight, a tremendous weight, right on top of him.

Ezra fought to right himself but he had nothing to work with. The pain in his shoulder seared through everything. It paralyzed any powers he might have had left, even if the man on top of him hadn’t been so damned heavy.

Momentarily, he was heavier still. Ezra heard a muffled thunking sound, felt the man go limp, pressing him into the ground, suffocating him. A dull buzzing began in his ears.

And then the weight was rolled right off him. 

For a second the blessed relief was all he could feel. Before the shoulder kicked in again.

“Oh... God,” he heard himself say, head torquing to one side in reaction, eyes slamming shut.

“Hey, hey.” There was a voice close to his ear, the warmth of a different body arching over him, close. “Easy, easy now. It’s me. Ezra, it’s me.”

His eyes wouldn’t open again at first. The roil of the pain seemed to have locked them shut. But he could smell Chris by then - the scent of sweat and tobacco, the dust on his coat, his very presence. He felt a hand slide under his head, and then another, cupping his jaw.

Ezra opened his eyes, blinked at the sudden wash of grit, the shocking warmth against his face. 

“Hey,” Chris said again, and Ezra tried to suck in some air. Really, he needed nothing, not even a fingertip, anywhere near his shoulder right now. He tried to push against Chris's chest with his feeble hand, then groaned, inarticulate, pleading.

At once Chris pulled back, fearful. The last of Ezra’s resistance was gone, seeping like blood out of every cell in his body into the sharply shifting ground beneath. He suddenly felt terminally lousy, as if his heart was seizing. It was like back at the fort, a brutal, convulsive energy cutting him in half. There was a band tightening around his chest now, and strange, stabbing lights were appearing at the edges of his vision.

“Ezra,” Chris said, the shadow of him blocking out the light. He didn’t seem able to express himself in any other way than by repeating his name. “ _Ezra._ ” 

Ezra kept his eyes open as long as he could to fully take in the scruff of Chris’s jaw, the fall of his hair, the burning relief in his eyes. 

Somehow he could accept the end if that was the last thing he saw.

*

Nathan and J.D. met them two days from home.

The first thing Chris had been glad about for weeks was that the two had traveled together for protection. He trusted Buck to do just fine back in town on his own. 

“Ezra?” Nathan called soon as he was in earshot. Chris felt a bloom of relief that the healer was out of the saddle before much else was said. “You all right?”

"No," Chris said, "He's not."

Ezra sat on a wall outside the little waystation where they’d stopped, a canteen of water on one knee. Chris locked eyes with him while he suffered Nathan unwrapping the mess of his shoulder and then examining him head to toe. Meticulous and apologetic.

“We get that joint back in properly?” Chris asked. Not that there was much ‘we’ about it. 

He’d been left on his own to try and imitate what he’d seen Nathan do in the past. Vin, whose relocation technique tended to be rough but effective, had been too busy being apprehended by a bunch of officious railway security men to be much help, and Josiah was dealing with the rest of the chaos. Chris had done his best, bile burning the back of his throat. Then he’d left Ezra half passed-out again in the care of Josiah while he caught up to Vin. Between them the security men had decided that Tanner, who’d thoroughly winged the feller who’d been shooting on the train and evidently looked dangerous himself, needed a spell in jail. 

“Hell, remind me to stand Bucklin a beer or two,” Vin had said with feeling when Chris had produced the confirmation telegram from Travis. He’d been too winded by the prospect of jail to even crack a smile.

“Knew it would come in useful somehow,” Chris had responded, stuffing it back in his pocket.

Nathan glanced at him now, then felt carefully around the relocated joint, a process which made Ezra claw at his sleeve. “All right, easy. You need laudanum for that?”

“No,” Ezra said through his teeth. “Joint’s in, just a tad sore.” 

Well, sore was one way of looking at it. Chris could tell from the greenish pallor of his face that Ezra was a whisker away from losing his breakfast. All in all he looked lousy. Although he was at least cleaner than when they’d found him, his face was drawn, eyes red-rimmed and sunken. In truth, despite no obvious injuries above the shoulder hurt in the scramble, he seemed kind of burned-out.

“Look like you ain’t eaten well in weeks.” Jackson shook his head, furious at the thought. 

“I have been a prisoner.”

“Can see that. And we ain’t got even half an idea why yet.”

“Volunteered. To be one kind of captive. In order to avoid being another. Simple and unedifying.” Ezra spoke in clipped sentences, concentrating hard.

Nathan huffed. He grasped Ezra’s chin, moved his head back, looked into his eyes. 

“Don’t seem very simple to me. You need to be fed and rested. And looked after. Something’s happened to you.” He frowned, fingers ghosting across the remains of grime around Ezra’s hairline until finally Ezra jerked his chin out of the hold in irritation. 

Nathan’s nostrils flared and he turned around to Chris. “Burns.”

“God damnit, Ezra,” Chris said, breath whooshing out of his lungs. He stumped angrily across and sat right next to him on the wall, muscling into his side, insistent, until, finally, he felt Ezra’s body sag into him. J.D. gawped at him.

“Yeah, so why don’t you tell us, pard.” Vin almost sounded aggressive. “What’s all that about?”

“Depends,” Ezra said, moving gingerly to look up at him. “Know what an induction current is?”

The familiar challenge in his voice couldn't quite disguise the dejection underneath. 

 

*

Days later when they were back home, Chris found some newspaper cuttings of Mary Travis’s, about the science of it all. 

Currents, conductivity, static, friction.

Some of it even made sense. Nathan, always enthusiastic about the frontiers coming down, wanted to send off for some European journals that might tell them more, although it cost so much for the shipping that they all had to chip in even for one or two. 

“Well it’s a coming thing for physicians,” he said eventually, attempting to sound wise. He’d looked at the illustrations in rather shocked silence. “Only not in the hands of quacks like Smith.”

Ezra himself seemed pretty fine.

Although they might have expected a long-winded telling, he didn’t say too much about Black Gulch Fort and what went on up there. After looking at the cuttings and journal extracts with careful attention he said he supposed the march of progress couldn’t be avoided. Smith thought so, and the army thought so, and the government thought so. All of them putting their money and their best minds into electricity. Not that Ezra could explain much of what the experiments were about. He claimed he’d been drugged silly most of the time while he was imprisoned. That he’d been so out of it, he didn’t remember. 

It could be very hard to judge if Ezra was telling untruths.

“Lyin’ like a rug,” Buck muttered, although well out of earshot.

Ezra’s main relief seemed to be that he hadn’t ended up in Yuma prison on a trumped up charge. Judge Travis, furious as ever with any misconduct by fellow law enforcers, was confident that the Sheriff in Black Gulch wouldn’t hold the office for much longer, although he wasn’t pleased that the man Nathan called ‘that lunatic doctor’ had disappeared. He'd left the train at some point during the mayhem, hadn't been seen since. 

“I don’t doubt he’ll turn up again somewhere soon,” Ezra said. "He has unfinished work." 

“Drooling feller in the wagon kind of work?” Josiah would say, pointed.

Well, Ezra would fluff, not wanting to know too much about that, Smith hadn’t killed anyone, not that they knew, and really, it was probably Ezra’s very own fault he’d ended up in such a predicament in the first place. Making deals with the Devil and all. 

Always steering them away from the detail, his favorite part of the whole story was, of course, how he got himself out of first the handcuff, and then the ropes, and then – if he’d had just a little longer – from the train.

“Reckon you could earn a living being one of those trick fellers - performing impossible escape tricks on stage,” J.D. suggested, only half joking. From the familiar quirk of Ezra’s eyebrow they decided he’d probably thought of that. If not done it already.

Vin would get real quiet whenever Ezra wasn’t telling them anything. As if something was paining him in the gut.

“Sure would like to know exactly what that crazy man did to him,” he said in private to Josiah, ice and fire in his eyes. “And what it was really for. I mean I know I ain’t exactly got clean hands when it comes to finding out stuff, but this makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Whatever it was for, reckon he had a lucky escape,” Josiah replied, calming him with a touch to the ribs. “Didn’t do much for that other feller. And he had those same marks remember.” 

He meant the scorchmarks at one of Ezra’s temples, of course. 

Not so obvious they’d been spotted straight off the moment they’d found him, but significant enough that once Nathan had noticed them they became hard to ignore. The marks healed up and disappeared to faint white streaks within a week or two, but even so... Vin and the others had gotten so uptight about them that Nathan and Chris didn’t even let on about the nasty-looking ones on Ezra’s spine – those tiny, raw flashes of scalded skin that Chris nearly choked over when he was sliding Ezra’s shirt off his back one late night.

“Son of a bitch,” he’d said when he could speak. 

Ezra had turned away, like he was ashamed, and Chris couldn’t stand it.

They all learned a rogue spark could make him jump. He didn’t seem nearly so keen on playing with fire anymore. Even the sudden, unexpected flare of a lucifer next to his face could bring him out in a cold sweat. And make Chris want to punch something.

Mostly, though, Ezra agreed with Josiah.

“A highly fortuitous emancipation, gentlemen,” he’d say, dealing the cards with a speed and dexterity that at times seemed strangely – almost supernaturally – more apparent than ever. “For which I am in your debt.”

“And you reckon you’re all right then?” 

“Faster, brighter, clearer.” Ezra would be sardonic. “Well, you can surely see how the Army would be interested in that.”

And much as it was horrifying, it made more than one of them wonder how these flashes of precision clarity might be useful to them as a group of peacekeepers. Made them see exactly why Smith and his military paymasters had been so damn interested. 

“Ezra isn't a weapon,” Chris would growl, furious at such talk.

“Course not.” Buck was the one to be mollifying. 

“Although if he was,” J.D. might say before someone told him to button his lip, “least he’s on our side.”

The main thing, what Chris came to know by instinct, was that there were certain times after Black Gulch when he, in particular, needed to be right there. To get himself close by Ezra’s side as fast as possible. Leave whatever he was doing and whoever he was with, and just get there. Dark nights, stormy weather, a certain crackle in the air. Never mind how it looked and never mind what anyone thought about it.

Because when he found him, Ezra would be caught, trapped fast, in some waking nightmare. As if there was someone – or something – coming for him. 

Chris would have to use his calmest voice, his steadiest arms, wondering what the hell Ezra could be seeing. 

“Just a storm,” he’d say, lips brushing gently against the scarred temple. “Nothing more than that.”

Ezra would pull away from him, rigid. He’d stare through the window as if mesmerized. 

And when the bolts forked across the sky outside they’d reflect in his eyes. They’d burn there for the longest time, an unnatural glow against the green, and when they were gone, just for a while, Ezra would be lost.

 

-ends-

**Author's Note:**

> "Electricity is really just organized lightning" ∼ George Carlin


End file.
